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Lightning strikes twice. — Two people have died in Lake Tahoe in shocking accidents. In a nearly empty parking lot, a hit-and-run driver kills probation officer Anna Meade Hallowell. High up on a jagged mountain, wife abuser Ray de Beers gets what he deserves: he's struck by lightning. Attorney Nina Reilly, hiking on a rare day off from her o... more »ne-woman law practice, sees him die. So does her date, Tahoe deputy DA Collier Hallowell. Still shaken from his wife's violent death, Hallowell is hit hard by the accident. It's a bad end to a first date...and the start of a case that will test Nina's ethics and her heart.

Nina is certain de Beers's death is an act of God. But his aging father wants to exhume the body to rule out foul play. De Beers's frantic wife and teenage twins hire Nina to stop the disinterment. What gets unearthed are secrets that raise new questions about Anna Hallowell's death, an indictment against one twin for murder, and a damning piece of evidence that can convict the boy...unless Nina obstructs justice by hiding it. No good lawyer will take that kind of risk. But a brilliant lawyer, one with a passion for truth, just might...« less

Top Member Book Reviews

The writing sisters Pam and Mary O'Shaughnessy (Invasion of Privacy, LJ 8/96) have partnered again for a third entry in their Nina Reilly series of legal thrillers. This time Nina's a witness to the death by lightning of a construction mogul in the Tahoe Mountains. When his father returns from a business trip, he wants Nina to have the body exhumed and autopsied for signs of murder, setting off a family furor. Suddenly, the grave is empty, the bodies of both father and son turn up in a smoldering mountain cabin, and the grandson is charged with murder. Nina is then asked to clear the grandson amid an increasingly complex series of interrelationships involving the D.A., his dead wife, a not-so-grieving widow, and, of course, the gardener.

Excellent story in the Nina Reilly series. As usual, Ms. Reilly, attorney extraordinaire, is smack in the middle of a mysterious murder. Not only does she believe that her young client is innocent, she takes it one step further, and breaks the law herself while trying to protect him.

good mystery style book. Half takes place in Lake Tahoe, described places there well, I know they are good since I live there. The other half takes place in Kailua Hawaii and those descriptions are just as good, lived there also for a short time. Good book for the mind.